System, method and program for distributed policy integration

A policy based management method in a system in which a plurality of policy repositories each holding policy information and a configuration management system to manage a configuration of resources according to a plurality of pieces of policy information are distributed in management domains on a network, the policy based management method comprising the steps of:

• installing a policy configuration management system that manages a set of an identifier of each policy information and each policy repository;
• when the configuration management system receives an event issued from a resource being managed, retrieving first policy information corresponding to the received event from a first policy repository;
• when the retrieved first policy information includes reference information representing a reference to another policy repository, referring to the policy configuration management system for an access means to a second policy repository indicated by the reference information;
• accessing the second policy repository by using the access means acquired by the referring-to to retrieve second policy information;
• and
• according to the policy information acquired, executing a configuration modification operation on the resources being managed.

A distributed policy linking method to resolve an association between policy information in a system where a plurality of policy repositories each holding policy information are distributed among management domains in a network, the distributed policy linking method comprising the steps of:

• installing a domain configuration management system to manage an association between an address of a policy repository in each management domain and the policy repository;
• retrieving an address of a first policy repository holding the policy information associated with a resource in which an event has occurred;
• referring to the domain configuration management system to determine whether there is a second policy repository at a level higher than the first policy repository;
• when the second policy repository exists, retrieving an address of the second policy repository from the domain configuration management system;
• and
• retrieving policy information to be applied to the resource by accessing the second policy repository.

A distributed policy linking method to resolve an association between policy information in a system where a plurality of policy repositories each holding policy information are distributed among management domains in a network, the distributed policy linking method comprising the steps of:

• installing a policy configuration management system to manage an association between policy information held in each policy repository and a means for accessing the policy repository and to manage an overwriting relation between policy information;
• and
• retrieving first policy information stored in the first policy repository;
• when the first policy information has an attribute indicating that the first policy information can be overwritten with other policy information, requesting the policy configuration management system to search for second policy information to overwrite the first policy information and a means to access a second policy repository storing the second policy information;
• and
• acquiring the access means to the second policy repository retrieved by the search and accessing the second policy repository to retrieve the second policy information.